Coral bleaching is generally patchy. An understanding of factors
explaining this patchiness can help us build resilience to climate change
into our conservation programs by improving the way we select our priority
conservation targets, design our MPAs and MPA networks, and define our
management strategies.

MPA planners and managers can identify coral communities that consistently
resist or avoid bleaching, as well as untested communities that are well
positioned to resist bleaching or those that bounce back quickly from it
and afford these high levels of protection (such as in no-take zones in
the design of MPAs and MPA networks). They also can develop a comprehensive
reef classification, use this to identify representative coral communities,
and include at least three replicates of each into no-take zones in the
MPA or network design. This helps to spread the risk of any mass
bleaching event taking out the only protected/managed example of one community
type.

All of this is easier to advocate in theory than it is to implement
in practice. However, given the patchy pattern of bleaching and mortality
we have already witnessed, we do need some radical rethinking of our hard-earned
conservation achievements to ensure that they will persist through the
next 50 years of climate impacts and beyond.

Concerning sea-level rise impacts on coastal wetlands, MPA planners
and managers can respond in two ways. To enable these wetlands to
march inland as sea level rises, they can include adjacent low-lying lands
into MPAs and address development of such areas through land-use planning
and integrated coastal management. They can also develop understanding
of the hydrological regimes, including both freshwater and sediment budgets,
affecting wetlands and ensure adequate flows into these systems.

MPA planners and managers need to focus on managing ecosystems in a
way that can increase their capacity to withstand impacts/extreme events
as well as increase their ability to adapt. Resilience principles
are emerging as a useful framework for addressing this, including both
as a tool for identification of important areas for special protection
as well as approaches to management. This entails, for example, identifying
areas that are protected from impact or are naturally resilient, resistant,
or tolerant to change due to biological or physical/oceanographic factors.
Ensuring such areas are under management that reduces or removes other
anthropogenic stresses increases survival of ecosystems as well as adaptation
to long-term change. Sufficiently large areas must be protected,
and connectivity between such areas ensured.

It should be noted that placing the large number of MPAs that are de
facto paper parks today under sound management would in itself be an immense
step forward. However, it is also essential that resilient MPA networks
are established and managed in a way that similarly increases the social
and economic resilience of human societies rather than undermining it.
IUCN is addressing resilience science and management though its Climate
Change and Coral Reefs Working Group (see http://www.iucn.org/marine).

To make sure MPAs are still relevant 50 years from now, we will need
to employ the best of modern technology to track and model changing oceanographic
conditions and shifting species ranges.

We know that large population sizes will be essential to facilitate
successful adaptation. Therefore, we will need to control human uses
to allow for the protection of vital breeding, feeding and nursery grounds,
and migratory corridors, recognizing that these may change over time.
We will need to develop creative legislation and employ creative managers
to establish dynamic MPAs that follow the food and shifting migratory ranges.
The information can be relayed instantaneously to ocean users.

One of the consequences of global warming could be major shifts in oceanic
currents, leading to dramatic changes in relevant oceanic conditions.
If significant areas of each ocean are not protected from damage by human
activities - particularly bottom trawling and pollution - these ecosystems
will lose resilience and the ability to adapt to major ecological changes
flowing from climate change. The effects on the health of the oceans,
and on the whole global biosphere to which they are connected, could be
very serious. These effects could catastrophically affect human society.
Science indicates that at least 30% of each of the world's major marine
ecosystems should be strictly protected from human-induced damage (by establishing
strictly protected MPAs) in order to ensure ecosystem health and resilience,
and biological diversity and productivity. If 30% of the world's
oceans are protected in MPAs, their contribution to the automatic establishment
of new, stable ecosystems in the radically changed oceanic regions of the
world would be very valuable.